


Metal collar

by ToxicPineapple



Series: Post-Game Virtual Reality AU [1]
Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: (i know i'm sorry), An OC - Freeform, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kaede's execution is described, Literal Sleeping Together, Many painful details here today folks, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Game, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team Danganronpa Sucks DIck, miscommunications, virtual reality au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22484830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: “Congratulations, Akamatsu!” He beams, and Kaede blanches. “Your trial was a total hit! Audiences are going crazy. The demand is high for trials of equal quality coming up, which is a lot of pressure, but it’s an excellent position for us to be in.”“You shouldn’t be talking to her so much,” says a woman’s voice behind her. The hands on her back probably belong to her. She smells like oranges. “She’s disoriented, she’s just come out of the simulation.”Kaede opens her mouth and croaks, “Simulation?” The woman’s voice is softer, more gentle, but this man is much too loud, and she doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. Audiences? Total hit? Trials of equal quality? “What are you talking about?”---When Kaede wakes up from the simulation, it is not Rantaro who is waiting by her side to greet her, but a couple of strangers. She tries to cope with what happened to her, and what she did, but doing so alone is never as easy as she wishes it would be.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Amami Rantaro
Series: Post-Game Virtual Reality AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617769
Comments: 12
Kudos: 126





	Metal collar

**Author's Note:**

> yeah tw for the strangulation descriptions :/ kinda rough
> 
> oh also emetophilia warning. kaede throws up at one point. it's not like detailed or super graphic but it happens

The metal collar chafes.

This is Kaede’s primary takeaway from her execution. Somewhere, amidst the horrifying rendition of  _ Flea Waltz,  _ she must pass out, because she doesn’t really remember anything else. Just an awful, awful chafing around her neck, and the inability to suck in a breath through her mouth or nose, short nails (still beautifully painted by the boy she killed) scratching uselessly at her neck, trying to alleviate the pressure. She can hardly see through the pain, everything is tinted green and then there is simply nothing at all, stars dancing before her vision, her heart pounding loud and heavy and beating against her skull, notes being butchered, endlessly, until--

Until nothing, she supposes, because when Kaede opens her eyes again, everything is dark. She sucks in a breath, instinctively curling in upon herself, but her head slams against something hard only inches away from her. Well, she says her head, but it really isn’t. It’s a sensation familiar to her because of all the time she’s spent falling off of bicycles. The feeling of a helmet slamming against the ground. She must be wearing something over her head.

Sucking in a sharp breath and slamming backwards into where she was lying before, Kaede feels tears spring to her eyes, her heart pounding wildly. She’s not sure what this is, or where she is, but she can’t see anything. Part of her wants to call it some kind of purgatory, or hell, perhaps, for what she did-- but she can’t say that, not with utmost certainty, because she had thought before that purgatory would be utterly sensationless. Just floating around in an empty void. Right now she feels rather warm, and sweaty too; sensationless has an odd sort of appeal, compared to the sudden jabbing pain in her temples.

Kaede forces herself to calm down. Blinks back her tears. Having a panic attack won’t do any good. It’s rendering her unable to focus. Slowly, tentatively, because she can’t help herself, she lifts her hands to her neck, feeling around for that collar, which she can still half feel the weight of pressing down on her neck. There’s nothing there, though, just her sweaty, hot neck, and when she pulls away her hands, they feel weak. Like she has a fever, perhaps, or has simply been lying under the covers for too long. She’s not under a blanket, but she’s certainly lying down.

What? Was it all a dream? Kaede screws her eyes shut despite the darkness, sifting through her memories and managing to pull forward the image of Shuichi’s face, of Tenko’s, of  _ Rantaro’s.  _ No, they’re in total high definition. She can vividly picture Tenko’s grass-green eyes, or the way Kaito winked when he grinned at her. No dream would be so clear after waking up. (She finds herself a bit disappointed by the revelation, though, because if it was a dream, then she wouldn’t have killed anybody. Or been killed in the first place. Something bitter crawls up her throat and she swallows it down.)

Where is she, then? In some kind of box? Back in elementary school, she and her twin sister had a bunk bed, and as Kashiko wasn’t a fan of heights, Kaede took the top bunk. Every morning when she woke up, if she sat up too quickly in her eagerness to go play the piano, she would bang her skull against the ceiling. It’s soothing memory, but not by much, because that still doesn’t explain the darkness, or the fact that when Kaede rests both of her hands at her sides and tilts them away from her, her fingers brush against slick, wet hardness. She must be in a box. And the darkness, well, perhaps that is the helmet.

Before she can think about this any further, there is a loud click that she feels in her lower back, and then a hissing noise, and a rush of cold air. Beams of green light struggle to make their way through her vision, and Kaede chokes on a breath, shivering in surprise. There are hands behind her back, helping her upright, and then more on her shoulders, pressure on the sides of her head. Slight pain, tightness, and then suddenly bright light fills her eyes and she screws them shut tight, flinching away from the blinding nature of it all.

When she adjusts, at least a little bit, she blinks her eyes open, and finds herself staring into a face that is utterly unfamiliar to her. Brown eyes, a very strange smile, and a business suit. The man standing in front of her has his hand outstretched, as though offering a handshake. Kaede blinks at him, bewildered. Does he want her to take his hand?

“Congratulations, Akamatsu!” He beams, and Kaede blanches. “Your trial was a total hit! Audiences are going crazy. The demand is high for trials of equal quality coming up, which is a lot of pressure, but it’s an excellent position for us to be in.”

“You shouldn’t be talking to her so much,” says a woman’s voice behind her. The hands on her back probably belong to her. She smells like oranges. “She’s disoriented, she’s just come out of the simulation.”

Kaede opens her mouth and croaks, “Simulation?” The woman’s voice is softer, more gentle, but this man is much too loud, and she doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. Audiences? Total hit?  _ Trials of equal quality?  _ “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t worry about it for now,” the woman comes into her vision. Brown eyes on her too, but prettier. She looks distasteful. “Honestly, all of this needs to stop,” she mutters, scowling, but kneels by Kaede’s side. “How are you feeling? The virtual world program is a relatively new thing, we only started using it recently with Season 50 and we aren’t sure if all the bugs have been worked out yet. Amami won’t tell us anything about how he feels-- it’s no wonder, going through two of them-- but previous users have reported headaches and achiness, are you--”

“Amami?” Kaede interrupts her. “What… do you mean? Amami is alive? What’s going on?” She reaches up to touch her throat again, wondering if this is a hallucination, and if she digs in deep enough, the metal collar will still be there. The woman pulls away her hands before she can test her theory. “I died, just now, I-- I was executed, and A-Amami is--”

“I don’t have time to explain all of this,” the man says, scowling. “I thought they’d remember more coming out of it.”

“She’s been through an ordeal,” the woman murmurs, feeling Kaede’s forehead. “It’s no wonder. She’s feverish. We should set up room for her and talk to her later. I bet you’re itching to get out of those clothes.”

Clothes? Kaede glances down at herself, at the gross, old-looking pink t-shirt she’s wearing and the white leggings. Yes, she’d like to get out of them, but more pressing is the urge to figure out what the hell these people are talking about. “Listen, I-I don’t care about-- about this,” she gestures vaguely at her body, feeling her brows pinch together. “I just want to know what--”

“Come on, then,” the woman gestures for her to stand up. “We’ll take you back to your room. There will be a shower there, and clothes, and water, too, I’m sure you’re dehydrated. It’ll take some time for you to start eating a lot of solid food again, but water you can do. You have a lot of questions and they will be answered, but first we need to get you into good physical condition. Can you walk?” She asks, as Kaede stands herself on unsteady legs. It’s too much information to take in at once, but Kaede doesn’t want to have to be supported by these strangers, so she just nods and tries to pull herself together.

“Just-- please, before that--”  _ Amami is alive? Can I talk to him? Can I see his face?  _ “Where am I?”

The woman gives her a tiny, sympathetic smile, and says, “You’re at Team Danganronpa Headquarters, Akamatsu. Danganronpa is the reality TV show you’ve just been executed on. Now come along, we need to get you some rest.”

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Kaede registers taking a shower, but she doesn’t stay in there for long. When she’s dried off and dressed herself in the pink sweatshirt and pants they hand her, blow dried her hair and braided it out of the way in the way that her papa used to do before tucking her in to sleep, people in green clothes Kaede identifies as doctors usher her over to a hospital bed and hook her up to an IV. She doesn’t really hear what any of them are saying, though, just a mess of words and sounds that she doesn’t particularly care to understand.

Her thoughts are swimming, undecipherable even to her, and when she closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep, she finds that the lump in her throat that formed when Shuichi named her as the culprit still has not lessened one bit.

\---

Kaede can feel it in her feet. Every time her body slams down into the keys. The impact is jarring and heavy and she is certain that she’s twisted an ankle, both of her ankles. She can’t stop clutching at her neck. Her fingers have always been so weak, good for nothing but the piano. That’s what she is, really, why she couldn’t save everybody, not even herself. She struggles to open her eyes but finds that she can’t see anything, it’s just a load of colours. Everything is blurred.

_ Flea Waltz.  _ It’s an excellent piece. She taught it to her sister back when they were in their sixth year of elementary. They sat down at the keys together, going over each painstaking note, until her sister got it down. And then Kashiko laughed and ruffled her hair, saying,  _ There’s a reason you’re the piano player in this relationship, Kaede,  _ and then turning back to the keys to play the whole thing without a single mistake.

Kashiko’s laugh. Kaede can’t even remember it. What would her sister say if she knew what she did? What she tried to justify to herself?

The collar is so tight around her neck. She half wishes it would just snap already. She can’t breathe, not even a little bit, and everything just feels so heavy…

\---

When Kaede wakes up, with a great start, she lowers her hands down from her neck and realises that blood is caked underneath her finger nails. (Bare fingernails, longer than she’ll usually let them get.) Her neck  _ aches,  _ stinging sharp and present, and it takes her a long moment to realise that this is because she was clawing at it in her sleep; not because she was being suspended by a metal collar.

She barely manages to tear the IV from her arm and rush to the bathroom before falling to her knees and ejecting the contents of her stomach into the toilet. (It’s just the water she drank before, nothing else. She hasn’t eaten anything in what must have been a very long time.)

Her coughs are thick and throaty, tears streaming from her eyes, and for a moment Kaede can’t breathe, and it’s so familiar, so reminiscent of her dream, that she has to bang a weak fist against the linoleum floor of the bathroom to remind herself where she is. When she’s done vomiting she scoots back against the bathtub and tilts her head, looking up at the ceiling and trying to stop crying. She barely notices the bathroom door creaking open, or the woman from before crouching in front of her with a glass of water.

After a moment, though, the world around Kaede comes back into shape, and she stops hiccuping.

“Here,” the woman puts the water in her face. “Drink. It helps, I promise.” When Kaede looks at her skeptically, she cracks a smile. “I know that sounds patronising, but rehydrating really does help.”

Kaede reluctantly accepts the glass. The water is cold, and feels nice going down her throat. She’s beginning to calm down, which is making her only more acutely aware of the stinging in her neck. Her eyes flutter shut for a moment, but the flush of the toilet reminds her that she isn’t alone in here. When she opens them again, that woman is sitting in front of her, criss cross apple sauce, with her hands on her knees and her brown eyes very concerned.

“Nightmare, huh?” She asks. Before Kaede can open her mouth to elaborate, she says, “I can guess.” She gestures at Kaede’s neck, which is undoubtedly a total mess to look at. To distract these thoughts, Kaede takes another sip of the water. “I had plenty of my own, when I was your age. Maybe for a different reason, though.”

“What do you mean?” Kaede manages to speak up. Her voice is hoarse.

“You weren’t in the first killing game. The fifty third, actually, was your number.” She explains. “Mine was twenty nine.”

These words take a moment to sink in. “There were other… killing games?” Kaede has more questions than just that, though. “You survived one? Does that mean that you--”

“Killed?” Her smile is rueful. “No. I was one of the last people standing. The nightmares never stop, by the way,” this is a very throwaway remark, but she still sounds tired. “But at least they’ve started using a simulation now.”

A simulation. Kaede closes her eyes, trying to process that information. It wasn’t  _ real.  _ Or rather, it was real, but not in the way Kaede thought it was. It was a virtual world, for a television show that’s been going on for ages. Did she agree to do it? She doesn’t remember anything like that, but the way that man talked about it, this is information that she should have already. Perhaps she did, and she doesn’t remember… Kaede shakes her head to clear her thoughts. “Why are you working with them, then? If you-- were put through the same thing.”

“I hoped at first that I could try to end it all if I joined,” the woman replies, in a conspiratory kind of voice. “Convince some people that it’s wrong. But it’s not as simple as I thought it would be.” She sighs, and then shakes her head. “At least they have the technology to do the simulation now. You come out traumatised, but you also get to live.” She reaches out and squeezes Kaede’s shoulder. “And it helps for the wackier aspects of this show. But nevermind all of that. You should be resting. I’ll clean up your neck and help you back to your bed.”

“Wait,” Kaede’s hand shoots out, latching around the woman’s arm. She doesn’t want to move, just yet. “What’s-- your name?”

The smile she receives is quiet. “Ayumi Watanabe. And if you’re wondering, I was the Ultimate Marine Biologist.”

\---

Kaede falls into a strange routine after that. She doesn’t want to watch the simulation, doesn’t think she has the stomach for it, but as soon as the doctors allow her to leave her room, this is what she spends all of her time doing. Curled up into a ball and leaning against Shuichi’s pod, watching him on screen. Watching him and Kaito train. Watching people with their motive videos. Watching everyone eat. That’s all she does, she watches, because there’s little else that she can do. Time passes slower in the simulation, Kaede’s noticed. It’ll be mid-afternoon for her by the time they reach lunch.

Perhaps that’s why she feels so spacey. Adjusting to the differences in time between here, the real world, and the simulation. It’s hard for her to deal with. Aside from Ayumi, nobody really talks to her. Some well-meaning Team Danganronpa staff attempted to, but she ignored them fiercely in favour of focusing on watching her friends, and so they moved on.

Ayumi is a good source of information for most things, though. Questions about how long it took her to wake up-- “Three hours,” Ayumi says, “though it only took that long because you died in the simulation,”-- and where they are-- “Countryside. It’s a weird place for a headquarters, but there aren’t a lot of interruptions,”-- and what other survivors of other Danganronpa games are doing-- “Trying to cope.” Ayumi looks down. “I haven’t been contacted by my fellow survivors since I started working with Team Danagrnonpa. Which is fair,”-- and all other sorts of things.

What she isn’t good for answering, though, are Kaede’s questions about Rantaro, who hasn’t left his room, not once.

“Look, Amami was in the fifty second killing game too.” Ayumi says, the fifth time Kaede asks. “And until everyone else is out of this simulation, he’s not allowed to contact his friends from it. He can’t be having a very easy time. I’m sure his seclusion has nothing to do with you.”

Of course, Kaede can’t even imagine that. Being in two killing games. Rantaro had to live through all of it once before having his memories totally wiped and being thrust straight into another one. By choice, Ayumi says-- but it wasn’t a  _ real  _ choice. It was a sacrifice.

“It’s an old tradition. There have been Ultimate Survivors for the ten games or so. Makes everyone nostalgic.” Ayumi sighs. “Cruel, in my opinion, but it is what it is. Amami struck a deal with his mastermind. He went into another game in exchange for the lives of his friends.”

Kaede is learning a lot more about him than she ever did in the simulation, but it feels wrong learning it from Ayumi and not Rantaro.

She sees him once, briefly. It’s an accident, though. In times when she doesn’t watch the simulation, she wanders around the space, wondering if she’ll ever be stopped from entering a room or going down a hallway. She hasn’t, yet. But this time, when she turns a corner she hasn’t before, she spots him sitting, knees tucked into his chest, against a wall. He looks… well, he looks normal. He’s dressed differently than he was, in a grey shirt and black pants, and his feet are bare, but… aside from seeming sad, with his face tilted forward so that his eyes are hidden, he seems the same as he did in the simulation.

And then he looks up, and one of his green eyes cracks open, and before he can so much as speak, Kaede turns on her heel and hurries away. She doesn’t know why she runs, but seeing his eyes again made her heart stutter and crash, and all of a sudden tears are burning at her eyes and she needs to go.

\---

Rantaro was innocent.

This is Kaede’s conclusion, her hunch, why she thinks the sight of him provoked such a strong reaction in her. She rolled down a shot put ball and lured him into a trap he wasn’t meant for. Of course the mastermind-- if there even was such a person, though Ayumi said that there was-- wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it. It was Rantaro, observant, distrustful Rantaro, who went there, and then died, at Kaede’s hands.

It wasn’t as though she was trying to kill  _ him,  _ but it doesn’t matter, because she still did. And the fact that it wasn’t real doesn’t make a difference either, because she didn’t know that at the time. And neither did he. He still experienced dying. And she still experienced killing. She reacted under those circumstances assuming that they were one hundred percent real. That’s unforgivable.

She stops asking about him after this. Cries herself to sleep the night after she sees him. He deserves his space. If he doesn’t want to see her, that’s perfectly understandable. She’s a murderer, after all.

\----

Kaede doesn’t ever sleep well. Either she dreams of dying, or she sleeps fitfully, waking up and thrashing around in her sheets with that awful music that was on the monitor for an hour playing in her head at full volume. She wishes that she could just forget it, but she’s never been able to forget music.

When she was in kindergarten, she used to play a game with her fathers. Her dad or her papa would sing her a song, and then they’d see how much of it she could remember after the first time. Kaede can read sheet music of course, but she learns best by ear, putting down what she hears on the keys. She wouldn’t call it perfect pitch, but when she hears a note she can always find it on the piano. When she listens to music, or plays it, it’s like she’s a part of it. Nothing else matters.

That’s not how it feels hearing that song loop through her head, though. Listening to it, Kaede wishes that she would lose the ability to hear. But that wouldn’t help, she knows, because the music isn’t really there. It’s all in her head. If she went deaf, she wouldn’t be able to hear anything else. Just that music. Over and over again. And maybe  _ Flea Waltz,  _ too; the twisted, warped version that played underneath her aching feet in the final moments of her time in the simulation. Not the sound of her sister’s laughter.

So perhaps Kaede is grateful that she hasn’t lost the ability to hear. She curls herself up into a ball in her bed and screws her eyes shut, trying desperately to tune everything out. When she opens her eyes again, it is bright outside, but the music still hasn’t ceased, and she can’t bring herself to go and watch that simulation, not right now, so she pulls the blanket over her head and pretends to sleep until she finally succumbs, falling back into her execution again-- but at least that’s familiar, by now.

\---

The door to Kaede’s room opens with a creak and she watches Ayumi step in, giving her a strange, sad look. This expression is so unfamiliar that there’s only one thing it could mean.

“Who--”

“Hoshi.” She replies quickly. “They’re starting the investigation now. I thought it was strange that you didn’t come out for so long, so…” she trails off and looks at the floor. Kaede gazes at her. Watching killing game after killing game can’t be easy. But what must be even harder for Ayumi is the fact that both Kaede and Rantaro are still alive, and they could be with each other right now, consoling each other. What Ayumi probably wouldn’t give to have her friends back. Someone who understands. It is horribly selfish to be not taking advantage of this privilege when it’s more than Ayumi has gotten.

But Rantaro doesn’t want to see her. Kaede rubs the fresh set of scratch marks on her neck, chewing the inside of her cheek. It isn’t fair, but… she sighs. “I’ll go watch.”

She doesn’t care to, though, she really doesn’t. Ryoma’s body is nothing more than a skeleton now, soaking in a puddle of bloody water. Water meant for Himiko’s magic show, no doubt. Kaede watches Shuichi kneel over the bones, Kaito standing over him. He looks so serious when he’s investigating. A far cry from the way he acts at any other time. But it’s the fact that his hat is off, really, that makes a difference. He seems more assertive like this. And his grey eyes turn greenish in the light.

Green. Kaede wonders if Rantaro knows what’s happened. The killing game has really started. It had already started before, when she killed him, but… but it’s happening even more now. Someone else has really killed to escape. Kaede gazes over at Ryoma’s pod. He’s been saying all this time he has nothing to live for. Even before, with the time limit, he volunteered himself as a sacrifice. To let everybody else out… Ryoma… Kaede shakes her head and buries her face in her knees.

She can’t watch this. Doesn’t know how other people can. The wide audience that Danganronpa apparently has. How can they stomach it? She chances a look up at the screen, where Shuichi and Kaito are investigating Ryoma’s lab, made to look like a prison shower. How is this even remotely entertaining? Kaede just wants to throw up. She stares down at her hands, which never seem to be free of blood these days. She scratches at her neck so much it’s a wonder that the doctors don’t tie her hands down to it. Ever since they removed the IV, though, nobody but Ayumi has actually been bothering to speak to her. So perhaps they don’t really care.

Suddenly Kaede realises that she’s crying again, though whether this is because of her revelation that nobody cares, or because Ryoma has been killed, she can’t say. Nobody seems upset, that’s the problem. People are just walking around and investigating. She hears Himiko on screen, complaining that she doesn’t really want to do a trial again. (She says it’s a pain.) Why aren’t they upset? Why aren’t they  _ furious?  _ Ryoma is dead. They don’t know it’s a simulation. Gone forever. Surely they didn’t buy into those things Ryoma was saying about not having a reason to live anymore.

But maybe it’s Kaede’s fault, that they aren’t, because she’s the one who started the killing game anyway. Maybe the fact that he’s dead (he’ll be waking up soon, though, three hours, Ayumi said) is her fault. All on her. The game wouldn’t have even started if she hadn’t killed Rantaro. They all might have died at Monokuma’s hands, but Ayumi said probably not. There’s no entertainment value in that. The audience would have been unhappy. So they would have lived.

(So there was no reason, none at all, to try committing murder.)

Kaede hiccups, wiping at the tears that are streaming down her face, and tries to suck in a breath, but her throat is far too dry, and she chokes on it, coughing and clutching at her chest. She can’t really  _ breathe.  _ It’s because she’s crying too hard, not anything else, and logically she knows this, but the second she can’t choke down a breath she reaches for her throat, wondering if that metal collar is back, and she can almost  _ feel  _ it chafing, the sharp vibrations through her feet as she is jerked up and down and up and down, and--

“Hey, hey,” it’s not Ayumi’s voice that says this, but Kaede can’t place it, doesn’t register anything but hands around her wrists, pulling them away from her neck. Big, callused hands. She recognises them. “Akamatsu-- jesus, you’re bleeding-- calm down, you’re hyperventilating.”

She manages to open her eyes (hadn’t realised they were closed in the first place) and is overwhelmed with green. Rantaro’s face is so close to hers, her heart nearly stops, but despite this she can’t stop herself from sobbing, from trying to wrench her arms away from his grasp, but he holds on tight. Firm.

“Akamatsu,” he says again. “Listen to me. Can you hear what I’m saying? Are you--” he breaks off. “Just-- look at me, okay? Meet my eyes?” He’s not making an awful lot of sense. She  _ is  _ looking at him. But because he asked, Kaede lifts her gaze, meets his eyes. At this proximity she can see the little flecks of darker green swirling in them, thick eyelashes weighted with concern, frown lines creasing the edges. Is he frowning at her? Or  _ because  _ of her? “There you go,” he praises with a tiny, tiny smile. “Slow down a bit, okay? Try sucking in a breath for me.”

The issue in the first place was that she couldn’t breathe, so it’s a very stupid request, but Kaede humours him. She closes her mouth and tries to calm herself down, and then inhales through her nose. She feels her lungs expand with oxygen and nearly starts to sob again, but forces herself to exhale, and then do it again, because when she breathes like that her head stops spinning so hard, and the weight of cold metal around her neck stops being so heavy.

Or maybe that’s the effect of Rantaro’s hands, steady and strong, still holding her hands (nails tough and sharp) and keeping her from scratching at it.

“A--” she breaks off when her voice shakes, and Rantaro gives her a patient look. He’s kneeling in front of her, brows furrowed together and his forehead creased, and Kaede realises that this is the first time they’ve really looked at each other since… since he died, really. Since the simulation. “Amami,” she manages to say. Her voice is still so rough and scratchy.

He smiles, though. “Hey.”

“W-Why’re you--” Kaede feels her eyes welling up with tears again, tears of a different kind, now that she’s calmer, and Rantaro’s gaze is so relaxing. “Why’re you here?”

“I’ve been known to leave my room on occasion,” Rantaro says lightly; it’s not what Kaede is asking and he seems to know it, because he sobers after a moment. “Hoshi.” He answers after a moment. “One of the attendants came and told me he was dead. I came out and saw you.”

Right. And then whatever instincts made him step in and promise to end the killing game back in the simulation made him reach out to help her. Kaede draws her hands back into her chest, and this time he lets her, returning his own to his sides. She looks down now, not wanting to meet his gaze. He didn’t even want to talk to her, but of course he reacted when he saw her having a panic attack. The tears from before burn, hot and angry, and she screws up her face trying to blink them away. “I’m sorry.” She manages.

“What for?” Rantaro tilts his head to the side, and it’s such a stupid question that Kaede nearly laughs aloud. Instead, she rests her head back on Shuichi’s pod, thinking of how he reached for her when that collar was latching itself around her neck. Trying uselessly to save her as she was whisked away to her execution.

Of course, she was reaching for him too.

“Akamatsu?” Rantaro’s voice is very quiet; tears have just begun to make their way down her face again. She owes him an answer, at least.

“For this. For everything. For killing you, and then for breaking down like this and making you come check up on me even though you don’t want to see me-- and I’m sorry for saying that, too, actually, because now you’re going to feel bad-- but it’s fine, I get it, you don’t have to see me and I killed you so that probably makes a lot of sense, really, and I--”

“Wow, Akamatsu, slow down,” Rantaro seems a bit panicked. “Where did you get the impression that I didn’t want to see you?”

Kaede opens her mouth to answer but closes it immediately after. It seems selfish to say,  _ when you holed up in your room and refused to leave that whole time,  _ because he’s been through a lot so of course he’d be in his own room. In truth, when he asks like that, Kaede can’t come up with much of a concrete reason for why she thought that way. Rantaro’s gaze when they saw each other that one time wasn’t hostile, it was just innocently surprised.

“I thought that  _ you  _ didn’t want to see me.” Rantaro murmurs. “You turned and bolted the first time I saw you after you woke up. I’ve gone to your room to see if I could talk to you a few times, but you’ve never been there.”

“I’ve been here,” Kaede says. “Watching.”

“Well, I get that now,” Rantaro chuckles bitterly. “You seem pretty cozy here against Saihara’s pod. I imagine this is where you’ve been the whole time.”

“I couldn’t not watch it.” Kaede whispers. “I didn’t want to, but I--” she watches Shuichi and Kaito walk together to the shrine of judgement. There is a determined look on Shuichi’s face. Perhaps he’s pieced everything together already, just like he did last time. “You haven’t been out here.”

“No,” agrees Rantaro with something of a smile. “I’d be too busy thinking about my chapter two to notice anything.”

Chapter two… Kaede bites the inside of her cheek. He’s familiar with all of this. He went through a game once before. When she meets his gaze, she sees that his eyes are watery, and suddenly it occurs to her that she’s not the only person who’s been having nightmares all the time. (But in Rantaro’s case, he has a full killing game to relive, as well as those awful days in the simulation they were in together. Much more than just an execution, and the looks in her classmate’s eyes as they realised what she had done. How she had betrayed them all.) But she’s been the only person she’s been thinking about.

Kaede closes her eyes so that no more tears escape and bows her head, feels her hair fall in front of her eyes, because she didn’t bother to braid it last night. It’s the only way that she can apologise, because right now it feels like her words have failed her. She doesn’t know what to say. Lacks the strength to even try. Kaede bites down on her lip, hard, and curls her hands in the fabric of her sweatshirt, trying hard not to shake.

And then, Kaede feels arms wrapping around her, her face being pressed into Rantaro’s shoulder as he engulfs her in a hug. His clothes smell like laundry detergent, a smell that isn’t really  _ him,  _ not the way she remembers from the simulation, but his arms are sturdy and warm, and suddenly she’s crying again, and shaking even though she desperately doesn’t want to. She doesn’t really  _ deserve  _ his comfort, but she doesn’t have it in herself to reject it, either, because when he shifts closer to take her into his lap, pressing a soft kiss to her neck where that metal collar was so harsh and unforgiving, she feels safer than she has since she woke up in the simulation.

\---

She can’t fall asleep tonight, alone in her bed, not with the knowledge that Kirumi and Ryoma will be awake soon, not while her head is swimming with thoughts, with worries about everything. How her friends will survive what’s coming.

(She can still hear them all, shouting for Kirumi to run, begging her to escape Monokuma, to be free.)

So instead, she doesn’t try. She slips her legs out from under the blankets and steadies herself when she lands on the cold floor, using the hair tie on her wrist to pull her hair back into a ponytail and out of her face. Her feet make padding sounds as she slips down the hall, but she knows where Rantaro’s room is because Ayumi told her, and because she’s passed by it every day on her way to the computer room.

Distantly, Kaede can hear voices, Kokichi’s, loud and mocking, and Maki’s, hostile, but she ignores them. When she gets to Rantaro’s door, she doesn’t bother knocking, just turns the door knob and slips inside.

Rantaro sits up as she enters, rubbing one of his eyes and looking bewildered. “Akamatsu, wh--”

“Couldn’t sleep,” she excuses. “And I think it’s stupid that we’ve been sleeping alone this whole time when we could’ve been helping each other.” She doesn’t make any other moves, though, because if Rantaro wants her to leave, then she will. But after a moment, his expression relaxes, and he nods at her, shifting over in his bed to allow her space. Kaede hesitates, but forces her legs to move, forces herself to climb up and under the covers beside him. When Rantaro lies back down, she does too, resting her head beside his on the pillow.

They lie like that, in silence for a while, but then he whispers, “I can still hear it.”

  
“What?” Kaede whispers back, even though she knows the answer.

“The music. That Monokuma was playing.” He holds up one of his hands, looks at it in the darkness, and Kaede wonders suddenly what he’s been doing these past several days, if he’s found a routine, or if he’s just been here, and around, trying to figure out what to do next. “After everything in my first game, whenever I wake up, that’s all I can remember.”

“Me too.” Kaede whispers. Rantaro looks over at her. “I can remember it. All of it. The whole song.” She pauses. “Even now.”

“Must’ve driven the audience wild.” Rantaro’s smile is beyond bitter; verges into crazed. It’s almost a grimace. “That kind of despair… you don’t get it anywhere else.”

“They won’t get any more of our despair.” Kaede reaches out and laces their fingers together, taking his hand and squeezing it tight. Rantaro’s eyes widen at her, but only a little bit. “We might have failed, but--” she breaks off. “Someone is going to end it. They’ll end the killing game. For real. I know they will.”

“You really think so?” Rantaro frowns at her. “I’m sure people have been saying the exact same thing ever since the first  _ real  _ Danganronpa they ever did.”

“I know.” Kaede closes her eyes. “But we died trying. And eventually someone is going to come out of it alive. And they’ll have succeeded.”  _ It’s a promise,  _ she thinks, but she can’t bring herself to say the words. Someone will do it. End it all. They’ll have to. And if they can’t, then they’ll tear down Team Danganronpa from right here. They will, because there’s no other choice.

Rantaro gazes at her for a long moment, but then he smiles and closes his eyes. “There it is again. The thing that made you so dangerous.” He hesitates, but then he whispers, “Thank you, Kaede.”

It’s her name. Her real name, her given name, the one that nobody has used for her in so long. (The music in Kaede’s head fades down into nothing, and in the silence, Kaede thinks she can remember the sound of her sister’s laugh.) “Of course,” she murmurs. “And… thank you, Rantaro.”

\---

Kaede’s nails are blood free when she wakes up the next morning, but this she thinks is entirely due to the fact that her arms are tucked around Rantaro’s shoulders; and his around her waist.

**Author's Note:**

> bro i'm out here not working on the spotless update and instead writing this
> 
> i can finally justify making a series and throwing in headache and cold >:) i'll be writing more post-game fics so go wild lol
> 
> idk what else to say. happy thursday


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